Michele Robb EDUC 31218 July 12, 2013 Short essay and evaluation prompts: Questions 1-6

1.

Language will continue to morph and evolve as long as there are people to speak it.

McWhorter describes the mutation of language in five categories. First, sound change, describes how generationally, a word can lose lesser accented sounds to eventually become a different word. Although words in written form may still contain the letters that made those original sounds, the vocalization has changed. His description of default explains that with each generation, what is heard becomes the norm so it is not realized that we are in fact, changing the original word (19). The second category, extension, is described as a virus (22). A rule governing certain words or clauses begins to slowly become the general norm for words and clauses not previously bound to that rule. This change into setting new rules for the words. An example was using the s to indicate plural at the end of some words. Over time, this became the norm for most nouns while some steadfastly held on to their original plural forms like mice (23). The third category is the expressiveness cycle. McWhorter describes this as our ability to lose emphasis on words so we substitute new expressions to regain the emphasis. Terrible has been watered down to just meaning bad, etc We may be currently witnessing this in an accelerated form in language used in a movie. What was once considered risky language in movies has become not only acceptable now, but increasingly acceptable for younger audiences. As our society becomes

desensitized to the word, a new one must take its place for that shock factor. The fourth category, rebracketing, creates news words due to a mix of multiple word sounds over time. Phrases commonly used begin to slur and lose their boundaries between one word ending sound and the next word beginning sound. It causes a sound to jump from one word to another, changing the words altogether. McWhorter gives examples such as Shire reeve to sheriff (28). The final category mutates language is semantic changes. Word meanings slowly expand or narrow depending on how they are used. Eventually, a word can be substituted in place of another similar, but different meaning, word. This causes an exchange in the words meanings and we begin to see the change as the default (31).

2. In chapter two, McWhorter argues that to say there is a language is a misnomer. It is

constantly in the state of change, forming one dialect after another until it becomes another language. He illustrates this idea using the eight Chinese dialects. We all have coined the term dialect to refer to Mandarin, Cantonese, etc. This may have basis in that the original language gave the formation of their written system; using symbols to identify whole words as opposed to sounds. The structure of this written system is displayed in all the dialects. However, as time morphed the original language, the spoken versions changed to the point of difference that they are not understandable to each other and must in fact be learned as a new language. As dialect is used to describe differences in a language (but still understandable),

this is not the case when applying the rule to the Chinese dialects as they are not understandable to each other.
3. McWhorter describes how language, the ever changing beast, is not easily defined. What

was once thought of like a family tree, language began as one entity (the trunk) and branched into different directions, each one unique (branches). Then as time goes on, one branch may split again and again, until we have the vast number of languages we have today, complex and changing yet still based from the same beginnings (92). He goes on to say that this idea is slightly too clean to represent the true nature of language. Language tends to not only split but also mix with one another. He depicts the idea of the branches also having blooms that then cross pollinate to form new flowers. If I took this visual one step further, I might see that each large branch has one color of flower, for example a red flower on one and a blue on the other. The sub-branches may then show red and blue with some mixing. Further subbranches could morph again to show eventually purple flowers as the mixing continues.
4. McWhorter discusses the benefit of knowing Latin as a springboard for mastering

English. The basis for this opinion lies in the history of the English language. The first "English" looks and sounds quite different than it does today. This is primarily due to the English language adopting words from Latin as people traveled and settled in the northern parts of Britain. These transplants carried their own language, many of Latin ancestry. Slowly, like in the analogy of question #3, the people began "mixing" the languages and the English language adopted many words and phrases that had Latin roots. I agree with the idea that having a knowledge of Latin would assist in learning English. While some words are adopted as a whole, much of our vocabulary can be broken down into pieces. These pieces

have significance in Latin which can assist the English Learner with understanding not only the word, but the meaning.
5. My son recently took Thai lessons. I was amazed by the number of words that were the

same in both Thai and English. For example, "apple" is the same. As the world gets smaller, people moving from continent to continent, technology through the Internet and general mixing of cultures, we find that words tend to jump over to another language and become that default for later generations. Some examples include beisuboru (baseball) and appurupai (apple pie) in Japan. As these words are adopted into the language, the sounds and syllabic emphasis may become altered to coincide with the language. This might cause us as English speakers to not recognize an "English" word that has made a place for itself in another language.
6. The continual mixing of languages, although accepted historically, is now causing some

controversy in modern times. One such example is "Spanglish", the mixing of English vocabulary into the Spanish language. We have seen this mixture mostly in the United States. McWhorter gives an eye opening argument that if a culture must speak language B, read it, use it and learn it, wouldn't it be obvious that they would then begin to incorporate it into their native language A (119)? Countries surrounding the US do not widely accept this new dialect however as McWhorter claims, it is the natural process of language mixing.